Music and All That's Left (Wing) Embrace Warming Pop-Aganda

Hollywood has been a liberal bastion for decades. Like the movies, pop music has been a leader for left-wing causes from Woody Guthrie in the ’30s to anti-Vietnam War folkies like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

The musicians that have followed in those left-leaning footsteps have read like a Who’s Who (or just The Who) of the music industry – Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, Madonna and Hannah Montana.

Hannah Montana? That’s right, teen idol Miley Cyrus, who appears as the title of the Disney Channel hit, has gone left, delivering a global warming anthem on her latest album.

Fans of the 15-year-old singer get an eco-lecture on her recently released album “Breakout.” “Wake Up America,” she sings, because “the earth is calling out.” The lyrics are about what you’d expect from a teenage climate expert – worthless pablum – ideal for her young audience.

“But everything I read – global warming, going greenI don’t know what all this means, but it seems to be sayingWake up, America, we’re all in this togetherIt’s our home so let’s take care of it” Of course she “doesn’t know what all this means.” She’s 15. At least she can use youth as an excuse for immaturity. But she’s no different than any other performer of pop-aganda. Their musical range is much more advanced than their political one.

Pete Wentz, front man of the band Fall Out Boy, explained the problem during a recent CNN appearance about how prominently music was employed at the Democratic convention. “Most of the people I met in Hollywood tend to skew pretty liberally, though a lot of people probably are in the tax bracket of being a Republican.”

There is no issue quite like the environment for performers to sing the same song. In the 1970s, the greenies were rocking to the “No Nukes” concert headlined by Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, and Jackson Browne. Their agenda helped cripple our domestic energy supply for 30 years. Energy independence isn’t a catchy tune on the Left Coast.

But their fight against the power isn’t done. With presumptive-GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain talking about 45 new nuclear power plants, the trio has put the band back together. Thirty years later, their new protest has moved to YouTube, but the song remains the same.

The group’s video features Raitt asking, “Why should the American people be subsidizing something that hasn’t worked for 50 years?” The United States gets 20 percent of its power from nuclear energy; France close to 80 percent. Musicians don’t have to be accurate, just entertaining.

Even more than nuclear energy is the music scene’s support of Al Gore and his view of climate change. A 2007 Washington Post article gave Gore the ultimate compliment, calling him a “rock star.” “He rolls with Diddy. He is on first-name basis, for real, with Ludacris.”

Gore used that status to become a failure as concert promoter – launching Live Earth events you had to fly to all seven continents to stage or attend. They were typical left-fests filled with music and silly star commentary. Madonna memorably urged Live Earth attendees, “If you wanna save the planet, let me see you jumping up and down.”

It’s no coincidence that Cyrus is a Disney star, either. The firm is secure in its eco-credentials. This summer’s big animated hit, “Wall-E,” depicted a future earth destroyed by selfish humans and now populated by a robot out to clean up the mess. U.S. News & World Report described the “film's aggressively green message” that included “themes of human extinction, malevolent corporations, and destruction of the Earth.”

Companies like Disney, which owns both its own channel and ABC, get to cross promote. Miley Cyrus can push her brand of global warming education and ABC News gives the far more alarming version of events – underscored by weatherman Sam Champion and reporter Bill Blakemore, two of the consistent voices of hype.

The result is the perfect intersection of left-wing news and entertainment. To combat it, the rest of us had better learn to face the music. Or, as Miley Cyrus put it, it’s time to “wake up America.”

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